All the Bright Places in Book Nerds Unite

Jan 13, 2022 lavendareyes ♡ rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2-star-rated, genre-romance, reviewed-books, genre-young-adult, reads-2022, multi-or-dual-pov

This is a low rating for a lot of reasons. I firstly want to start this review by saying that if you’re reading this book and you want or need somebody to talk to, please do reach out. This book in-turn has a lot of trigger-some content and in my opinion, content that also wasn’t dealt with correctly. Do not suffer alone. Your mental health, and well-being matters. You matter.

This review may be trigger-some to some people as it discusses sensitive topics about suicide, abuse, etc. Please do not This is a low rating for a lot of reasons. I firstly want to start this review by saying that if you’re reading this book and you want or need somebody to talk to, please do reach out. This book in-turn has a lot of trigger-some content and in my opinion, content that also wasn’t dealt with correctly. Do not suffer alone. Your mental health, and well-being matters. You matter.

This review may be trigger-some to some people as it discusses sensitive topics about suicide, abuse, etc. Please do not read further, as I don’t wish to trigger anybody if so. But if you do want to hear my opinions on this despite that, then please know that you can step out of reading this review at any time.

I first started this book purely because it was one of the book’s a close friend group recommended for this small book-club section we had over on Discord. I already knew I wasn’t going to be the biggest fan of this book, with the way it began. It was a really slow, draining and at points, boring book. I didn’t DNF it because I wanted to read it all the way through just to see how things were dealt, and what would happen. This book bothers me, although I did like the writing. I just didn’t like the plot, or the characters.

All the Bright Places introduces us to two different alternating perspectives of Violent and Finch, two semi tots in high-school who bond because they have a lot of issues they’re struggling with. Violent with the death of her sister, and having survived the accident herself, and Finch with his parents’ divorce and mental health, feeling like an ‘outcast’ or ‘outsider’, a ‘freak’ who cannot fit in. They both form a friendship, as well as a relationship and for a school-project they end up travelling with a map to visit some interesting sites. Of course, the book ended on an obvious turn point that you could see coming.

I really didn’t like this book. Not just for the characters, but for the subjects it entailed. The characters themselves had very shallow character development, an emotionally manipulative male protagonist, and ugh, irresponsible, inconsiderate adults, and YA clichès and tropes like insta-love. This book has slut-shaming, body-shaming, abuse, suicide, and topics that need to be talked about, but this wasn’t talked about in the best light. That provided misinformation. Some would even say this book actually glorifies depression/suicide.

I want to start by saying that I really didn’t like either character, especially Finch. It was evident he had a mental-health disorder of sorts, but that wasn’t much the issue. The issue with his character was that he forced himself into Violet’s life, even when she asked him not to. He didn’t respect every boundary she had, even when she was recovering from her sister’s car-accident death — he tried to get her to drive or be in a car. He’d pressure Violet to hang out with him, and reveal her secrets. He based his entire self-worth on her existence, and even at the end she feels she is responsible for what happens to him. There were days where they would make-out, and he’d be wanting to have sex with her. Although he would respect she didn’t want to do it there and then, it did seem he’d count down to it, as if it would complete their relationship or add to it in some way. I just felt creeped out by their intimate scenes and much preferred them being just friends.

I personally felt that Violet’s grief story was overshadowed by Finch’s perspective, when it could’ve been a much better plot-line to have both. It seemed her grief was forgotten about through most of the story, and then only brought back up again with Finch’s irresponsibility. I also just want to add here that the way this book was written made it seem like Violet was trying to fix Finch and his problematics. That’s a big red flag.

Besides that, the parental-figures and adults in this book were entirely irresponsible, and didn’t care for what Finch was up to half of the time. It felt like Violet only existed to be an emotional component in this book. The characters were just a scattered mess to me.

Moving on to the serious part, the plot. This book, personally I believe it glorifies suicide. Finch painted this perfect picture in your head, making it seem like death, although inevitable is a beautiful and romantic thing. I hate that! The parts about mental-health in this book lacked precision. I’m not an expert on mental illnesses, and the portrayal of them in books. But I really didn’t understand what led Finch to commit suicide. All that was left was a trail of hints, trinkets and things to help Violet move on. Yes, suicide can be silent. It can be really hard to spot, but it was evident he was open with his suffering and no characters besides Violet even tried to do anything about it! This book could reach the wrong audience, and make one think “they’ll all care when I am gone.” “The world is a better place without me here.” And those thoughts are not good.

This book offers no help. It doesn’t fix anything, it just provokes the message that nothing will get better, that the only way out is through suicide, and that it’s okay for those suffering to give up, because people will care only when you’re gone. That’s not the truth. This book lacks so many important aspects. I appreciate how the author tried to bring such important subjects into a book, but the portrayal didn’t execute as well as you think. Suicide is not some edgy or deep thing like this book has made it out to be. It’s serious. Nobody took it seriously in this book, and that makes me mad.

This book just reinforced inaccurate beliefs that nothing can be done just because you’re having a hard time, you’re suffering, you want to die. You go through the whole book feeling like the ending is inevitable, and that’s not okay. This book was supposed to be emotional, but it didn’t resonate with me at all. I just didn’t like this book at all, and that’s exactly why I am rating it so poorly. ...more

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Jul 03, 2021 madisonslibraryy rated it really liked it

amazing

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Sep 19, 2021 Linoy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I saw the movie back in 2020 when it first came out so I already knew what’s going to happen. I love it. I really do and it also got me out of a two months reading slump.
The fact the the book is based on a real story made it sadder. Booktok really made me think that I would cry my eyes out but it was only a few tears for me.
The book was a lot better than the movie.

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